Film and migration: the problem of trauma

Abstract

Abstract Since the birth of cinema at the end of the 19th century, there has been a fascination with discourses of migration, especially since its rise as a media technology coincided with the last phase of colonialism and the global wave of settlement associated with it. For example, in Canada, the United States, and Australia, film was recognized as early as the first part of the 20th century as a means of drawing settlers to desired areas or as a method for instructing newcomers on how to blend with the society. Certainly, in countries like the United States, many filmmakers, such as Ernst Lubitsch, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, and Jean Renoir, were themselves immigrants who recognized the inherent dramatic potential of immigrant narratives, focused on individuals who have left the safety of home and family for strange lands where they must struggle to fit in with cultures often hostile to their presence. By the 1950s, film often played a major role globally in the liberation of countries from colonialism, as a tool of documentation and propaganda, and as a means of reestablishing pride in race and nation. Contemporary films on migration often depict the movement of peoples as a global phenomenon that not only blurs the boundaries between nations, but calls into question the very nature of those boundaries.